Brady still chairman, but state GOP panel preps for his succession

Leader's support of same-sex marriage bill drives push for ouster

April 14, 2013|By Rick Pearson, Chicago Tribune reporter

Illinois Republican leader Pat Brady survived a move Saturday to immediately oust him as party chairman over his support for same-sex marriage, but top state GOP leaders approved a succession strategy that could find him replaced within the next six weeks.

The plan for a succession committee was approved as the Illinois Republican State Central Committee met behind closed doors for nearly three hours at the Tinley Park Convention Center while a raucous group of about 50 social conservative and tea party activists were kept away by police. The move appears to provide Brady with an exit strategy to leave the post he has held since August 2009.

"I'm still here," Brady told reporters after the meeting. "I think it was a good, productive meeting. We'll see what happens going forward."

The succession committee plan was approved by 87 percent of the weighted votes of the GOP committee members. The committee's entire membership will sit on the succession panel, which one member said will function as a search committee to choose Brady's successor.

The panel is to issue its findings within 30 to 45 days, said one panel member who was not authorized to discuss the events behind closed doors and spoke on the condition of anonymity. There is no favored candidate to succeed Brady, the panel member said. No vote was taken Saturday on removing Brady.

Brady created a controversy within the state GOP in January when he endorsed pending legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in Illinois. The measure passed the Illinois Senate in February with the support of one Republican.

Supporters of the measure say they are within a dozen votes of the 60 needed for House approval. Two GOP members, Reps. Ed Sullivan Jr. of Mundelein and Ron Sandack of Downers Grove, have said they will vote for it and expect other Republicans to join them.

A month ago, Brady survived an attempt to replace him that was engineered by state Sen. Jim Oberweis of Sugar Grove and Jerry Clarke of Urbana, two members of the State Central Committee. An emergency meeting to force Brady out was canceled because of a lack of votes and lobbying by U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk's aides in support of the GOP chairman.

Kirk later became the second Republican in the U.S. Senate to voice support for same-sex marriage.

The same-sex marriage issue has highlighted the long-standing tensions within the state Republican Party between social moderates and conservatives. But the timing of the controversy comes as leaders of the GOP at the state and national level have been looking for outreach initiatives after Republican losses for the White House and in Illinois at the congressional level.

"It's about addition and not subtraction," Brady said of the differing viewpoints within the GOP, "and if we come off as mean-spirited or angry or too dogmatic, then we don't attract people to the party."

Though Brady has said his endorsement of same-sex marriage was given personally and not as party chairman, Oberweis and others took issue. They complained that Brady should not be countermanding a plank in the state Republican platform that specifies that marriage can only take place between a man and a woman.

Brady had made it clear that he would fight attempts to be ousted. He got the chairmanship at a GOP meeting on Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair in August 2009 after the surprise resignation of Andrew McKenna Jr., who later ran a failed bid for the 2010 GOP governor nomination.

In Tinley Park, social conservative activists chanted "we are the party" outside the closed meeting room and banged on meeting room doors, then were later ushered into another area of the convention complex by Tinley Park police.

Mark Stern, a Republican precinct committeeman from Oak Brook, said Brady has diverted the focus of the GOP and hurt its ability to move beyond minority party status.

"I think Pat has brought this upon ourselves by forcing this issue," Stern said. "We need to talk about the 80 percent we agree on. He's focusing on the parts we disagree on and creating a wedge issue for the party, and I think it would be more responsible for him to step down and let somebody come in who could unite the party."